Heated IKEA furniture assembly session mistaken for domestic dispute

When Swedish police arrive at an apartment after being alerted by neighbors to a possible domestic disturbance, they find a frustrated couple brandishing Allen wrenches and a set of indecipherable furniture assembly directions.

Just like snowshoeing, producing really good pop music, and preparing lasagna out of moose meat, you’d be inclined to think that assembling IKEA furniture without breaking a sweat would be one activity that all native Swedes are inherently skilled at.

Apparently, that’s not the case.

In Stromstad, a small town in western Sweden near the Norwegian border, police were recently summoned to a couple’s apartment after concerned neighbors called to report a domestic disturbance — complete with banging noises, screaming, thumping, and a wailing infant — at one in the morning. When they arrived, police found that the couple weren’t throwing knives at each other, swinging a baby around by its feet, or reinacting one of the more kinky scenes from "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." They were simply in the throes of trying to put together a piece of IKEA furniture.

When officers arrived on the scene, they found the couple was engaged in that most Swedish of activities, assembling Ikea furniture, and that the crying did indeed come from an infant child. It remains unclear if the baby was simply crying in need of attention, or whether it too was frustrated by the complexity of the Ikea instructions.

It's also unclear as to why in the world that the couple would decide to embark on such a formidable home improvement project after midnight.

Personally, every time that I’ve tried to put together a piece of IKEA furniture it’s sounded like a mix between a Catholic funeral mass, a Hitchcock film, and a Sumo wrestling event. Anyone out there caused such a ruckus while assembling IKEA furniture that it alarmed the neighbors?